A PASSIVE/aggressive behaviour in relationships is exemplified by the behaviour of the six hens that we rehomed from a commercial egg laying business.

I have written before how these hens arrived, virtually totally denuded of feathers. Since they were first capable of laying an egg, they had been housed in a vast agricultural building.

They were the lucky ones who did not exit stage left to the chicken processing factory, but came to join our own motley bunch of hens.

Once settled and refeathered, these hens had aspirations. But a very determined and yet subtle way of achieving them. The farm buildings, which represented dream nest sites to our hens, held no appeal. It was the farm house they wanted to get into.

After several months of throwing these cooing (they do not cluck, they coo, quite unnerving) hens out of the porch, then back kitchen, then actual kitchen, I snapped. One squidge of hen poo too far.

So now these hens are confined to a hen run where they congregate by the gate waiting for any person, usually me, on whom they can fawn, ingratiate and thus gain attention.

Because they may not have the same variety of forage inside the run, I save stale bread, vegetable peelings, scrapings off plates and crushed egg shells to supplement their daily corn ration. As I approach the gate to their pen they rush to meet me.

I was discussing their unusual behaviour with Dave, the owner of the farm where these hens came from. “Oh they love people,” he said, “the staff who collect the eggs are in several times a day and they were always followed by the whole flock, cooing and clucking away, from one end of the shed to the other.”

Now we are used to vocal poultry. They crow when they lay, cackle if disturbed, cachinnate (look it up) when falling out with each other over a prime perch in the hen hut.

But I remember when the silence of one particular bird, a goose, gave a neighbour quite a turn. Her boyfriend Brian, a butcher, had been given a goose to dress for Christmas lunch. He had stuffed the bird under the seat of his van, then called to collect her from work.

The goose was trussed up in a bag, only it’s head left exposed. So when Pat’s calf was gently nibbled and stroked from under the seat, it was quite a let down to discover that it was a goose and not Brian.